


After the Meltdown in the Park

by ReflectingLightInStarsHollow (Cassandra14)



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 02:23:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10777479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cassandra14/pseuds/ReflectingLightInStarsHollow
Summary: When she looks back on her meltdown in the park years later, Lorelai will realize she already had a partner. After all, how else could she explain it, the way Luke took care of her? -  A post-episode tag to The Incredible Shrinking Lorelais





	After the Meltdown in the Park

If she had been any less exhausted or any less stressed, Lorelai would have hastened to pull away from Luke, to sit up straight and force a smile and crack a joke to try to draw attention from her red eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. 

She was an independent woman, damn it. A woman about to open her own business. A woman who’d raised a Yale-going daughter despite getting pregnant at sixteen, who’d gone from maid to manager, who’d bought her own house with her own money. 

She was supposed to be able to handle anything and yet here she was, breaking down on a bench in the town square and literally crying on a man’s shoulder. 

It should have been humiliating but Lorelai just didn’t have the energy to  _ feel _ humiliated at this particular moment. 

Luke continued rubbing her arm, not seeming to mind her blubbering all over him. He was also saying some rather nice but currently unbelievable things about how she was going to figure this out and the inn was going to turn out wonderful and how Rory and she would find time to do stuff together soon. 

Her blubbering dwindled until it stopped and she slowly raised her head. Aware that she must look a sight, she dug through her purse for a kleenex. Luke kept his arm about her shoulders. 

“Sorry about that,” she mumbled, wiping at her face. “Don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s fine.” 

“Yeah, I’m sure this is how you pictured your day ending.” She sat upright, obliging him to withdraw his arm. Lorelai found that she instantly missed it and almost as instantly scolded herself for that thought. 

“Lorelai,” he said in a gently admonishing tone, “it’s okay.”

She scrubbed at her face, then attempted to fix her hair into something approaching order. 

“Have you had dinner yet?” he asked. Lorelai shook her head. 

“Did you drive here?”

She squinted at him. “Yes. Why?”

“Because I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to drive home right now.” He stood and declared, “Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll drive you home.”

“I can’t leave the Jeep here, I won’t have time tomorrow morning to -”

“We’ll take the Jeep,” he informed her. “Just wait here, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed, her voice thin. She watched him cross the street and enter the diner, passing through it and presumably on upstairs. It was still open, Cesar and Lane manning it, and Lorelai stared at the handful of people within while she waited. 

When Luke reemerged into it, she realized that she hadn’t even considered leaving and that he’d been upstairs several minutes. He carried a tan cloth bag in one hand, the sides bulging. Pausing briefly in his stride to check in with Cesar, he exited the diner and strode quickly towards her. 

“You changed,” she remarked as he drew up beside the bench. Luke glanced down at his customary attire of flannel, army jacket, and jeans. 

“Yeah, sorry for the wait.” He extended the arm not holding the bag to her. “Come on.”

She took it and got to her feet. Lorelai resisted the urge to tuck herself into his side, under his arm, before he dropped it. Instead, she nodded to the right. “Jeep’s this way.”

When they reached it, Lorelai passed him the keys. He opened the passenger door first, holding it for her while she climbed in, before walking around to the driver’s side and getting in. He stashed the bag behind her seat. 

Lorelai twisted until she faced him, laying her cheek against the headrest. Luke glanced at her, but when she said nothing, merely started the car and turned his attention to the road. 

They were quiet on the ride to her house. It matched the blank static inside her head, her mind having given up working in the face of everything. 

Luke used her keys to unlock the door. He ushered her inside, locked the door behind them, and steered her towards the phone table. “Why don’t you see if Rory’s called?”

Lorelai bobbed her head once. As he proceeded into the kitchen, she slumped into the chair and poked at the messages button. Listening to Rory’s message made her heart ache, and when she called back and also got voicemail, she almost cried again. Instead, she screwed up her best impression of cheerfulness - knowing it was unconvincing - and left her own message which omitted any mention of how not well she really was. 

As she put down the phone, Luke came back, a questioning expression on his face. 

“Voicemail,” she stated. 

“Ah...well...the food will take about twenty minutes if you want to change.” He gestured at the stairs. 

Lorelai levered herself to her feet. “I think I’ll do that.”

When she caught sight of herself in her bureau mirror, Lorelai cringed. In addition to the bags under her eyes, her mascara had run. She’d smudged her makeup and her hair had devolved into a straggly mess. 

Deciding she needed a shower, she threw her hair into a bun to keep it dry. Twenty minutes wasn’t long enough to deal with shampooing and styling it properly. She removed her makeup and then hopped into the shower. 

The hot water revived her somewhat. After washing, Lorelai allowed it to pound on her back and shoulders, helping ease the knots that had grown there. 

She dried and dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt which read “Coffee makes the world go round” stamped across a spinning globe. The t-shirt had been a gift from Rory several years earlier. Over it, she pulled on a Yale hoodie. 

Checking the mirror, she shrugged at her reflection. She looked better than she had and Luke had seen her in worse. When he’d stopped by when Rory had contracted chicken pox, she had been wearing the same yoga pants and t-shirt for two days and hadn’t showered in three. 

Good smells wafted to her as she descended the stairs. Her stomach gurgled, hunger surging as she identified bacon, cheese, and garlic in the aroma. 

“Hey,” said Luke when she walked in, “I was just about to let you know the food was ready. Sit down and I’ll put it on the table.”

He’d set the table with real plates and silverware, not the plasticware Lorelai had been using for weeks. Taking a seat, Lorelai fingered the napkin, paper as she lacked any other kind. 

“You didn’t have to do this,” she protested half-heartedly. 

“It’s no big deal,” Luke replied. He removed a glass casserole dish of macaroni and cheese from the oven, setting it on the table. Lorelai could see bits of bacon in the pasta and he’d sprinkled bread crumbs on top which were now golden brown. Her stomach rumbled again; Luke’s mouth twitched at the corners. 

He turned back to the oven to get a baking sheet of garlic bread. Putting the sheet on the stovetop, he transferred the loaves to a cutting board before slicing them and dumping the slices into a waiting towel-lined basket. 

Bringing this with him, he sat at the table. When he offered her the basket, Lorelai grabbed a slice and immediately bit into it. 

Luke put a second slice on her plate before adding one to his own. He dished out the macaroni and cheese for them both while Lorelai continued devouring her garlic bread. 

She focused on eating and was grateful when Luke limited his conversation to asking if she wanted another slice of bread or a refill on the iced tea when he poured more for himself. He didn’t ask her to further explain why she’d gone nutty on him; if he had, Lorelai was pretty sure she’d have started crying again and she didn’t want to do that. 

“Lorelai.” A hand nudged hers and she started, scraping the fork’s tines on the plate. She and Luke winced. 

“Huh?”

“You’ve been pushing that noodle back and forth across the plate for awhile now.” 

“I have?” Lorelai blinked hard a couple of times, noticing the lone pasta shell on her plate. “Oh. Right.”

“Had enough?” 

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“You should go on to bed. Things will look better after a good night’s rest,” he told her. Swiping her plate, he stacked it atop his and rose. “I’ll clean up.”

“No, Luke, I can’t -” She scrambled to collect the silverware, joining him at the sink. “You’ve done enough, I’ll -” 

“Yes, you can.” Dumping the plates in the sink, he tugged the silverware from her hands. “Bed. You. Now.”

When she opened her mouth to argue, he dropped the silverware and grabbed her shoulders. Physically turning her around, he gave her a small shove towards the main room. “Go.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” she muttered. Exhaustion returned in full force with her stomach now sated and her body dressed in soft, comfortable clothes. 

She shuffled upstairs and burrowed into her bed. Very faintly, she could hear Luke moving about downstairs.  

It was a strangely soothing sound.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write this piece for the longest time and finally told myself to just sit down and write it. I know it doesn't match perfectly with what's seen onscreen for the end of this episode, but it feels right to me that Luke wouldn't have let Lorelai go home alone and would have tried to take care of her in the ways that he could. 
> 
> P.S. I'm working on the next chapter of Family of Choice but hoping this will help tide you over until it's done.


End file.
